By Walter Salm, Editor Emeritus{FP}Mark drove his car to the freeway entrance, noted the sign that said "Automatic," pressed an "engage" button and the car locked onto the buried magnetic cable that ran down the center of the right lane. He leaned back and opened a tattered copy of War and Peace and began reading ...

By Jacob Fattal, Publisher{FP}In November, 44,000 visitors from around the world descended on the Messe München for productronica 2017. Our U.S. Tech staff was there in full force. The trade show is a biannual pillar of the electronics manufacturing industry, and this year's event surpassed expectations ...

By Walter Salm, Editor EmeritusThere has been a remarkable transition in the automobile-buying public in the U.S. All-electric vehicles are pushing their way to the top of the popularity list, and for good reason; they run clean and the fuel cost is far less than gasoline. But, there is still a carbon footprint, ...

By Jacob Fattal, PublisherThe costly data breaches of recent years, most notably the Equifax disaster that was revealed in September, are becoming uncomfortably common. It's hard to tell whether hackers are getting smarter or companies are getting lazier, or just plain stingy. It's likely to be a bit of all ...

By Walter Salm, Editor EmeritusI had the good fortune to grow up in a much simpler age in a small town in Upstate New York. When I was five, the local bakery would send a horse-drawn wagon down our street, which was a magnet for all of us kids. We would surround the wagon clutching our precious pennies and nickels ...

By Jacob Fattal, PublisherToday's technology has advanced to the point where we routinely manipulate single subatomic particles, sometimes with baffling results. This is typified by the classic double-slit experiment, first documented in 1927 by Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer. The experiment demonstrated ...

By Jacob Fattal, PublisherAutomation is upending the entire job market. Over the next 15 years, nearly 40 percent of all U.S. jobs are vulnerable to machine replacement, according to a study by PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers). This number is so high, partly because the U.S. has such a high percentage of employees ...

By Walter Salm, Editor EmeritusI was on my way to Pascagoula, Mississippi, for a ship launching at the Litton-Ingalls shipyard. It was around 1963, and my seat-mate, Les Solomon, the technical editor of Popular Electronics magazine, was his usual ebullient self, happily gabbling away. The occasion for the ...

By Walter Salm, Editor EmeritusWhen I was in grammar school, the ongoing "big" science story was about a new 200-inch reflector destined for California's Mt. Palomar observatory. The new mirror would make the Palomar telescope the most powerful on the planet. But it was so huge, it took two years to simply cool down ...

By Jacob Fattal, PublisherWearable technology has been a forward-looking concept that has had a hard time finding a home in the day-to-day life of consumers. In 2004, at the CyberArt Festival in Bilbao, Spain, fashion house CuteCircuit introduced its HugShirt, a sensor-laden garment that records the strength ...

By Walter Salm, Editor EmeritusI love my Nook Book e-reader, even with its annoying quirks. At any time that I am reading electronically stored material, I am also reading two other books in hard copy. Of those books, a recent paperback read had a very special characteristic: it cost me absolutely nothing. ...

By Jacob Fattal, PublisherBig data is expanding on a scale that is difficult to reckon with. According to IBM, every single day 2.5 exabytes (2.5 x 1018) of data are generated. Since the early 2000s, considered "the beginning of the digital age," the percentage of global data stored digitally has grown ...

By Walter Salm, Editor Emeritus Question: Have I gotten too smug in my total acceptance of today's technology? I have been royally spoiled over the years, before the technology became a factor, but much of the spoiling came on so gradually that I really didn't notice until I did a little reminiscing on the Internet ...

By Jacob Fattal, PublisherIndustrial robots are not new. Large companies, particularly major automakers, have been using robotics in manufacturing for years. What is new, however, is the reduction in size and cost that is making them more widely available. This is combined with efficient software and a connection ...

By Walter Salm, Editor EmeritusAs you travel the Interstates close to the Canadian and Mexican borders, you will see many highway signs that show distances in both kilometers and miles, and some only in kilometers. This is a serious reminder that the U.S. is incredibly isolated when it comes to using (or not using ...

By Walter Salm, Editor EmeritusSitting on my desk, next to my computer screen, is a 3 TB USB-3 external hard disk drive, purchased at Costco. It's been there for a couple of years, acting as a backup. Sitting on the floor behind the tower is a much smaller, 500 GB HDD. Hanging over the left side of the tower, plugged ...

By Jacob Fattal, PublisherThe age of mass employment in manufacturing has passed, likely never to return. Often cited by political figures, the need to renew and create manufacturing jobs at home has been a sort of Holy Grail for policymakers in the U.S. This is not a uniquely American issue. Politicians in ...

By Jacob Fattal, PublisherPoorly-secured, Internet-enabled devices have become targets in the latest round of cyber attacks. The recent attack on Internet infrastructure company Dyn in late October, in which a huge number of IoT devices were used to obstruct access to sites including Twitter, Amazon, Netflix ...

By Walter Salm, Editor EmeritusLithium. It's number 3 in the Periodic Table, it is the lightest of known metals, and was first used as early as the 2nd Century A.D. in ancient Greece by physician Soranus to control bipolar disorders. The Greek physician didn't know it was the lithium that was working the wonders ...